I actually tried to kill this program a couple of times. They've gone through an initial round of testing, and they have excellent radar defeat - we just haven't tested them with people in them yet. You'll notice these stealth panels, similar to what we use on the B2. The rotors have been muffled with decibel killers. It's slower than a Black Hawk and lacks the offense. But it can hide.
Excuse me. Can I ask a question? What do we need this for in Libya? Gaddafi's anti-air is virtually non-existent.
George
Gentlemen, can I have your attention? My name is George, I run the Af-Pak division at CTC, and I'm primary on this for the Agency. This is a title fifty operation. Some of us have worked together before. This is a good one. Maya, do you want to brief them?
Maya
There are two narratives about the location of Osama bin Laden. The one that you're most familiar with is that UBL is hiding in a cave in the Tribal Areas, that he's surrounded by a large contingent of loyal fighters. But that narrative is pre-9/11 understanding of UBL. The second narrative is that he's living in a city. Living in a city with multiple points of egress and entry, and with access to communications so that he can keep in touch with the organization. You can't run a global network of interconnected cells from a cave. We have located an individual we believed, based on detainee reporting, is bin Laden's courier. He's living in a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan. And we assess that one of the other occupants of the house is UBL.
Excuse me. You got an intel source on the ground?
Maya
No.
No? Okay, so how do you know it's bin Laden? Cause the truth is, we've been on this op before, it was '07, and it wasn't bin Laden, and we lost a couple of guys.
Maya
Totally understand, Bin Laden uses a courier to interact with the outside world. By locating the courier, we've located bin Laden.
That's really the intel? That's it?
Maya
Quite frankly, I didn't even want to use you guys, with your dip and your velcro and all your gear bullshit. I wanted to drop a bomb. But people didn't believe in this lead enough to drop a bomb, so they're using you guys as canaries, on the theory that if bin Laden isn't there, you can sneak away and no one will be the wiser. But bin Laden is there, and you're going to kill him for me.
